Grammar and Language Grammar and Language TeachingTeaching

A professional development A professional development workshopworkshop

UC Consortium on Language UC Consortium on Language Learning and TeachingLearning and Teaching

The standard view

• We used to do grammar and now we don’t.

• Should we start doing grammar again?

…..But this is the wrong view.

The right way to look at the issue

• We know that learners develop their own unconscious mental grammar.

• Is there anything we can do to help (beyond lots of input and interaction)?

• If so, what?

These are real questions

• The answers aren’t obvious.

• We don’t know everything we would need to know…

• …but we do know some things, and that is what we will learn about at this workshop.

This is a live research area

• There are many things we don’t know yet.

• There is disagreement about what we do know,

• And disagreement about how to implement pedagogically what we do know.

As a result…

• Our speakers will agree about many things

• But they may disagree about some others.

• This is to be expected, and should make things more interesting.

Our goal is not to brainwash you

• This workshop will not try to present some “party line” or single way of teaching.

• You are the best judge of what is most appropriate for your circumstances.

What you should get from this workshop:

• An understanding of what is known about the topic and what is still unresolved.

• Ideas on how to apply this understanding to classroom practice.

We want you…

• To question your assumptions about language teaching (even those very close to your heart).

• To explore new and interesting ways of promoting grammatical development in your students.

• To choose and adapt the ideas that are a good match for your class, program, institution.

Much still remains to be discovered

But we already know a lot.

Here are some basic facts that everybody agrees on (or should)…

1. What you teach ≠ What students learn

• The brain has its own syllabus.

• When exposed to a new language, your brain begins to process the incoming information:

• New sounds• New words• New structures

• The brain has its own way of doing this. The teacher and the learner have little direct control.

The implicit/explicit distinction

• When the brain processes information “on its own”, this is “implicit learning” and it results in “implicit knowledge”.

• Ordinary language learning and use are mostly implicit.

• In language classrooms, students often acquire conscious knowledge of how the language works. This is “explicit learning/knowledge”.

The implicit/explicit interface

• Clearly, you can have implicit knowledge of some property of the language without explicit knowledge.– E.g. You know something sounds right, but you can’t

explain why.

• You can also have explicit knowledge without implicit knowledge.– E.g. You understand how some property of the

language works, but you can’t actually do it in spontaneous speech.

The implicit/explicit interface

• Can implicit and explicit knowledge influence each other (is there an “interface”)?

• This is the big question. What is clear: If there is an interface, it is limited.

• This is why you can’t assume that what you teach (explicitly) is what students learn (implicitly).

The problem for language teachers

• Explicit knowledge can be taught and tested in a relatively direct fashion.

• Implicit knowledge can only be taught and tested indirectly.

• But for many people (teachers and students), implicit knowledge is the main objective.

2. Anecdotes are not always reliable

• Acquiring a language is like acquiring a pot belly.

• Once you have acquired implicit knowledge of a particular property of the language, it is hard to know what caused that acquisition.

Anecdotes

• Teachers and learners are often eager to report what works and what doesn’t, but how can they be so sure?

• Conclusion: Reports of personal experiences are often valuable and full of insight, but still they must be taken with a grain of salt and balanced against research results.

3. All languages have grammar

• Narrower definition of “grammar”:

How words are constructed

How sentences are constructed

Constructing words can be easy…

• Mandarin Chinese pronouns:

wo ‘I’ women ‘we’

ni ‘you’ nimen ‘you pl.’

ta ‘he/she’ tamen ‘they’

…or kind of hard

• Spanish verbsstem + tense/aspect + agreementcom e scom a ncom iera mos

• Mandarin Chinese verbsTa lai-le.Ta lai.

Constructing sentences can be easy…

• Basic word order

English:

The cat chased the mouse.

Japanese:

Nekoga nezumio toraeru.

cat mouse chased

…or kind of hard

• French causatives

Jean a fait manger le gâteau par Marie.

Jean made eat the cake by Marie

‘Jean made Marie eat the cake.’

Broader definition of “grammar”

• All aspects of the structure of the language, including pronunciation.

Mandarin Chinese:hěn + hăo = hén hăo ‘very good’

Spanish:dedo = deðo ‘finger’

Moral of the story

• No matter how you define “grammar”, all languages have it.

4. Learners learn all languages in same way

• Basic processes and stages of learning seem to be the same no matter what the language is.

• No basis for idea that different languages require significantly different teaching techniques.

5. There is more to grammar than “the grammar”

• No book covers all the grammar.

• Many crucial topics are often ignored.

An example from Spanish

• Las acelgas detesto, no las espinacas.

‘Swiss chard I hate, not spinach.’

• Las acelgas, las detesto.

‘Swiss chard, I hate.’

An example from Spanish

FOCUS

• Las acelgas detesto, no las espinacas.

‘Swiss chard I hate, not spinach.’

TOPIC (Clitic Left-Dislocation)

• Las acelgas, las detesto.

‘Swiss chard, I hate.’

More examples of focus

• Las acelgas detesto, no las espinacas.

• Algo hiciste. Nada compré.

something you-did nothing I-bought

‘You did something’ ‘I bought nothing’

The two constructions compared

• Focus

Las acelgas detesto, no las espinacas.

NEW INFO OLD INFO

• Topic

Las acelgas, las detesto.

OLD INFO NEW INFO

One more thing

• Focus: Preverbal subject not possible.

*Las acelgas yo detesto, no las espinacas

Las acelgas detesto yo, no las espinacas.

• Topic: Preverbal subject possible.

Las acelgas, yo las detesto.

Las acelgas, las detesto yo.

Lessons

• Textbooks often leave out major topics.

• We don’t know how to explain everything:Algo hiciste vs. Hiciste algo

• We sometimes “simplify” things in very misleading ways.

Similar examples could be given for any language.

So beware of statements like:

• “I already taught them that; I don’t know why they’re still making that mistake.”

• “Reading aloud helped my pronunciation.”

• “My language doesn’t have any grammar.”

• “You can’t teach Chinese the same way you teach Spanish.”

• “We covered the whole grammar in one year.”

Conclusions

• Students’ development won’t necessarily follow our syllabus.

• Implicit learning (our primary goal) can’t be taught directly.

• This is true for all languages.

• What is useful for one language will probably be useful for all.

• No book contains all the grammar.

Overview of workshop

• Today and tomorrow

Public lectures and demonstrations

• Monday

Closed sessions for funded UC participants.

Small working groups, development of materials.

Today

• Leonard Newmark: “Explanation vs. Experience: Time Economy in Language Teaching”

• Robert Kluender: “How Linguistic Knowledge Can Ease Learning”

• Bill VanPatten: “Mental Representation versus Ability in Second Language Acquisition” (Part 1)

• Georgette Ioup: “Putting Error Correction into Proper Perspective”

Tomorrow

• Grant Goodall: “Fitting Grammar into the Language Learning Experience”

• Victoria González Pagani: “Beyond Drills: Web Technology in Teaching Grammar”

• Bill VanPatten: “Mental Representation versus Ability in Second Language Acquisition” (Part 2)

• Robert Kluender: “How students acquire things you never teach them”

• Elke Riebeling and Patricia Zuker: “Grammar-focused activities based on Internet materials” (demonstration)

• Grant Goodall: “TPR and the teaching of grammar” (demonstration)